The entirety of the Space Shuttle Program seems like a worthless waste of time in retrospect with tomorrow’s Artemis II launch. Just glorified planes that went higher than other planes. Not a single one ever went further than low earth orbit. Decades wasted on absolutely nothing.
>>16938658Counterpoint: It looks cool
>>16938658The whole idea of the space shuttle was basically just a compromise between the ambitions of NASA and the realities of the funding cuts post-apollo. They decided to focus on probes for exploration and develop a reusable vehicle for orbital missions.
>>16938658The space shuttle played a major role in constructing the ISS, and since the shuttle was retired NASA has had difficulty in getting its own people to the station, having to rely on Russian or unreliable private flights. It was clearly more than nothing
>>16938658Nothing could or can do what it was capable of on its own. Bringing payloads to and from space. Not to mention the study and development of materials and procedures for reusable spacecraft. You have to start somewhere, even if the materials and infrastructure isn't available.
>>169386782nd stage reuse is a retarded ideaTheres no way to arrive at a competent vehicle from that concept
>>16938658Call me once Saarship lands with crew in one piece for the first timeUntil then stfu
>>16938837Then who was photo?
>>16938866The filename says "approaches ISS." Someone on the ISS took the photo
>>16938658Devils advocate: Shuttle was designed to enable MORE deep space missions. Maintaining Apollo was never going to happen. If low cost access to LEO was achieved then you could assemble and deep space mission in LEO, which is already half way to anywhere. It jsut turns out that retarded decisions meant that Shuttle never once even carried a cryogenic boost stage, let alone parts for a deep space rocket. The closest Shuttle ever came to it's intended use was ferrying ISS parts to LEO.
>>16938658The space shuttle might have been a vital piece of hardware if material sciences were more of a focus and there were more spending on space stations.
>>16938658well they did at least manage to fix the Hubble with it, so it wasn't *all* a waste of money.
>>16938658They were supposed to cost much much less per launch than not using them, they just failed at everything they set out to do with it besides the really nice big carrying capacity. The achilles heel was they didn't realize they maintaining the orbiters to be safe and not blow the fuck up cost much more than one use rockets for the same goals. It's also a sunk cost fallacy thing, like "why develop a new crewed capsule for complex operations requiring a spacewalk when we already have shuttles to get them up there"
>>16938658Most of it was paid for by the military and launched a ton of spy satellites. The science stuff was secondary.
>>16938658Baby people needs to exercise for muscle development. Just don't put them near me. I get a heart attack at how repulsive someone developing is.
>>16938837>SaarshipFalcon 9 has already launched double the payload in double the flights in half the time. It has also launched like 70 people without any of them dying horribly. The shittle is complete dogshit when compared to modern operational vehicles.
>>16938658If anything they were a major net negative, since some stupid teacher getting killed was the excuse retarded needed to kneecap manned space flight by decades.
>>16942378To be fair if they killed it then at there, it would have been a net positive for NASA. Even they themselves admitted the Shuttle program was what set back space exploration by decades
>>16942331>b-b-but Falcon 9You Muskrats are already calling Falcon 9 obsolete and shill for total Saarship monopoly.>modernFalcon 9 is just Titan II that can come back and land.
>>16938658Go to ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok or whatever AI you're capable of using and ask what the top 20 accomplishments of the Space Shuttle era were. Then shut the fuck up and never create a thread like this again, you fucking mental infant.Is there any possible way you're not a millennial? Your generation wastes petabytes of Internet space declaring things you never put a speck of research into.
>>16943398>Go to ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok or whatever AI you're capable of using and ask what the top 20 accomplishments of the Space Shuttle era were. No need to because 4chan is pretty much all bots by now. So instead of going there, I might as well just ask botchan.
>>16938658its not really a waste of money when you see how little money NASA has to actually work with, We've spent more in Iran the last week than it costed for Artemis II
>>16943414>Large-scale money laundry makes the other overpriced thing goodThat's not an argument.
>>16939133This. It was a good idea that was constrained by budgetary reality. Still unrivaled in how fucking cool it was.
You're right. We mush give more money to Israel
The Space Shuttle absolutely failed at its promise. It got interesting things done like ISS and Hubble but it literally should have accomplished a thousand times more.What was promised in the Saturn V replacement:>$20 million per mission>two week turnaround for inspection and refuelingWhat was delivered>$1.5 billion per mission>nine month turnaround to rebuild the entire thing from scratch after every mission>40% of them exploded with total loss of crewImagine if every dime spent on the Shuttle was instead just diverted into 200 more Saturn V missions. Fuck, given economies of scale, make it 400. By the 2000s we'd have a moonbase, a manned Mars landing, a human orbit of Venus.
>>16938658Well two of them blowing up probably didn't help.
>>16943518>200 more Saturn V missionsAnon pls, we almost got Apollo 17 canned as well (but Nixon stepped on wrong toes with that one)
spaceplane with a large cabin was so much cool thoughthese fucking capsules are turbogay
>>16943954the problem though is that everything wrong with Shuttle boils down to the Orbiter being basically deadweight
You already have 101 different rockets out there.
>>16942029Came here to say this, the shuttle was a godsend for the DoD
>>16944037I understand the full extent of wasted potential within the Shuttle program, but Orbiter was the coolest part. And now that it's gone, everything else feels like a downgrade.
In awe at the size of this lad. Couldn't have been done without the Shuttle.
>>16943518Stop bitching and complaining and build the new fucking spaceship already then.Seriously, you're fucking useless otherwise. I don't see you working for NASA or Elon or anyone in the space industry so either fix all the fucking problems or STFU!
>>16938658Didn't we end up learning a ton about reusable orbital vehicles because of the Space Shuttle? You wouldn't have Falcon 2, the Dragon capsules, or Orion without it. Granted you could say a lot about the post-Apollo space program but the Space Shuttle wasn't really one of them.
>>16946359out of 5 flight worthy examples 2 of them killed their crew thats a fucking horrible flight record no matter how you slice it
>>16946361...fair point. But wasn't that more so due to negligence from NASA than anything?
>>16946367I feel it’s moreso people’s infatuation with the cause of death than anything nobody today is still lamenting the deaths of the first couple people who were killed by automobiles, yet even i must admit that Columbia and challenger hit way different, even if ultimately it’s the same concept
>>169463612 class A's out of 135 launches for the platform (plus 1 ATO that didn't affect the mission). Columbia was a result of long-term operating fatigue to which the shuttle design was vulnerable, but Challenger was lost due to colossal mismanagement at NASA and Morton Thiokol.The day will come a day when SpaceX has RUD on a crewed vehicle, and they will have to answer to shareholders. It will not be pretty.
